I haven't really been into it since the big population cap change and requiring to manually visit planets thing. I get that Haxus wants empires to necessarily consist of more than one person but... it was more fun the other way frankly. Especially since it's hard to administer an empire with multiple players, since you can't put multiple people in one position or one person in multiple positions, IIRC.
as i see it the problem is that hazeron lets you play as empire leader right from the start, of course this has sense at the start of the galaxy where there arent any empires to join, but in time there will be several solo empires, this isnt fixed disabling new players from creating their own, but i think empires should be something to look forward in the future, not at the start. in fact i would say that it would be more hilarious if we didnt need to join an empire right on the start, but make several people spawn in the same planet, the challenge would be to see if they decide to join together and found their own, or just start each one a city and from there they fight until one of their nations becomes a planetary empire.
i think it would be cooler to add more of that to Hazeron, i know its mostly a space game but it would be cool to have some planet gameplay first. it would mean a longer process, but at least it gives planets a use before becoming just safespots and resource faucets.
basically, haxus make the development almost upside down, why?, because he focused more in the empire building stuff and less in the RPG and individual part. im not talking about solo players, but make players join together in order to progress. this doesnt happens in hazeron, you can just be a solo empire and live alone in a corner of the galaxy, out from the main cluster drama.
yeah we have NPCs working for us, but we have to take account of the role of the player there, apart from being a soldier, spaceship crew/captain or empire manager. the automation of the game makes it look more like an RTS for that matter. if he wants players to have a role there, he needs to give more value to player actions than NPCs, without removing them completely.
as for the spaceship revamp, im looking forward to that, i hope the GLSL stuff allows to more complex and stilized ships than what we have now, of course with a revamp of the spaceship mechanics. and the awful console UIs...